Police add 6 officers, pursue additional technology
USC is re-evaluating how much it spends on law enforcement and where it allocates those resources in the wake of crimes over the last week, university officials said Wednesday.
USC President Harris Pastides said the university was planning a series of measures, from installing more security cameras to hiring a bigger police force, to mark a “relentless commitment” improving campus safety.
Pastides asked Chris Wuchenich, the director of the Division of Law Enforcement and Safety, to consider if his department needed more money or resources Wednesday morning.
Pastides said he expects such requests would be approved by the board of trustees.
“If he thinks they need more resources to make the campus safer, it’s very unlikely we wouldn’t be able to deliver those,” Pastides said.
The request followed an alleged rape and robbery of a woman near East Quad early Tuesday morning and a pair of armed robberies last week — one each on Sumter Street and Pickens Street.
Pastides said he was “outraged” by the string of crimes and that incidents like Tuesday night’s are “unacceptable.”
Last year, the department received a 10-percent budget increase — an additional $600,000 annually for the next three years. It hadn’t received such an increase in 30 years, Wuchenich said.
Those funds are mostly being spent on hiring new officers and adding additional technology, like security cameras and call boxes, Pastides said. Officials aren’t releasing details of the other technologies, saying they don’t want would-be criminals to know what efforts the university is taking.
Those moves could also be supplemented by efforts from the city.
According to Pastides, Mayor Steve Benjamin said Wednesday afternoon that he was willing to have more lights and cameras installed and to increase Columbia police patrols in the city’s jurisdictions near USC’s campus.
This week, USC’s police department added six new officers to its force, bringing it to a total of 64, Wuchenich said.
But the timing of their integration into the department was “coincidental,” Pastides said, adding that the hirings had more to do with USC’s growing student population than recent safety concerns. Training a new officer takes about nine months.
More officers will be hired over the course of the three-year funding increase, Wuchenich said, but how those funds will be spent isn’t entirely set because law enforcement needs are prone to change.
“What I think we’re going to need three years from now is not what we’re going to (eventually) need,” Wuchenich said.
The university is also looking into improving lighting on campus, revamping late-night shuttles, reducing wait times for them and offering smartphone applications that make reporting information to police easier.
Students wait on average 11 to 12 minutes for the evening shuttle that loops through campus from 6:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. weekdays and 15 minutes for the on-demand shuttle that runs from 12:30 to 6:30 a.m., said Derrick Huggins, the associate vice president for transportation and logistical relations.
And USC police will start making more traffic stops, Wuchenich said, because students and their parents have told the department they appreciate seeing officers engaging actively.
Doing so could have “an unintended consequence,” Wuchenich said; it’s possible that even if officers only intend to issue warnings, more students could be arrested, especially on suspended license and drunken driving charges.
“We’re hoping that that will be a minimal issue,” Wuchenich said.
Pastides also said he was open to discussions about how the Carolina Alert system operates. Students were notified of the Tuesday morning incident at 9:37 p.m. that night.
“I’d be open to receiving input about how it’s working,” Pastides said. “I’m not here to defend the system or tell you it’s perfect. I don’t know if it’s perfect or not.”
Discussions about USC’s efforts to improve on-campus security began shortly after Pastides was notified of the incident at 9:30 p.m. Tuesday.
“It’s not, to me, more relevant if over the course of the year the statistics don’t bear out that there are more incidents than last year. To me, we have incidents right now, and we’ve got to do something about them,” Pastides said in a meeting with the university’s safety committee. “Today was a hard day.”